Question Why do Unity forums randomly drop valid images?

Does Unity have guidance on how to properly reference images for work-in-progress forum posts? It appears as though Unity's forum software, or a related CDN, drops requests or invalidates a prior working image link.

I'm externally hosting images and I can confirm my host (Microsoft Azure) is able to handle the volume of requests. I link to these externally hosted images in forum posts.

I notice that embedded images periodically fail after initially working. If I access that failed URL directly, the prior image still loads.

What is the best approach for hosting images within a work-in-progress post so that they load consistently?

Failed images example:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/stellar-conquest.1420391/

 

Are you sure it's the forum software and not a proxy of yours or your ISP's or something? I can see all of the images on that thread, none of them is broken for me as far as I can see. Although this is not a guarantee of course.

 

For me 5 images are not loaded, which are showing red cross.

 

All the images work for me.

 

I've never seen the forum drop images that it's hosting. I've only ever seen images dropped that were being hosted by a third party and it's almost always been some weird one I'd never heard of. All of the images at that link work for me. Some load a little faster than others but they all work.

 

Thanks for trying this out. Your insight helped me out. There is a Unity proxy that acts as an intermediary between the forums and the host:

Code (CSharp):

1. https://forum.unity.com/proxy.php?image=...

If the proxy fails it can cause a red X to appear, even when the external image is available.